The agonies of Tom Flanagan

At times he has played the commentator-clown in seeming imitation of his former student Ezra Levant. As a regular guest on CBC’s news network, on one occasion he inexplicably dressed up in a buffalo-skin coat and on another he called for the assassination of Wiki-leaker Julian Assange. (Both jokes, he says).

But he is also the most serious of men. He is an experienced campaign organizer, having played a pivotal role in Stephen Harper’s rise to lead the Canadian Alliance, then the Conservative Party, and ultimately into power as prime minister. He directed the unlikely Wildrose party campaign that nearly knocked off Alberta’s PCs in 2012.

As a professor at the University of Calgary, he first made his mark with an unorthodox take on the career of Louis Riel, but has written on everything from game theory to contemporary politics. In recent months, he has published two important books: one a must-read for political activists of any stripe on political campaigning and another, more personal book, I’ll come back to in a moment.

One of the strangest things about Tom Flanagan is the way he thinks his many roles can be simply separated.

I remember giving him a lift to a Manning Institute meeting once and asking him how he reconciled his academic and political careers. Easy, he said. When in politics, he acts as political people do: with discretion. And when in academics, he acts as as academics do: without much discretion at all.

And that may be how he got himself caught in a great big wringer over child pornography, of all things.

Persona Non Grata: The Death of Free Speech in the Internet Age is Flanagan’s attempt to analyze how his reputation and career came undone in less than 24 hours after an ill-considered aside on the subject during a highly-charged meeting on native rights at the University of Lethbridge.

When the book came out a few months ago, it got attention mainly for his acerbic comments about his old colleague-at-arms. All in one paragraph, he called Stephen Harper “Nixonian”, vindictive, prone to rage, depression and psychodrama. No wonder the two men have long since ceased to be on speaking terms.

But the meat of the book is Flanagan’s effort to come to grips with his own personal drama: an astonishing fall from grace in which he was denounced by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Wildrose party, unceremoniously dumped by the CBC, and treated shamefully by his longtime employer, the University of Calgary.

In what he calls “The Incident,” Flanagan was asked a planted question on child pornography during a lecture on the Indian Act. In response, he attacked what he called the “jihad” on the right against child pornography, saying he had no sympathy for child molesters but had “grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures”.

You don’t have to sympathize with Flanagan’s personality, his politics, or his views on prosecuting the consumers of child pornography to understand that he was convicted without a trial, traduced by former political friends, and caught in the hopped-up whirl of the social and traditional media cycle.

Bizarrely, he mentioned en passant that for a time he had found himself on the mailing list of the North American Man/Boy Love Association — an organization of pederasts.

The clip was quickly turned around as a YouTube video with the inflammatory and unfair caption, “Tom Flanagan okay with child pornography”.

By the time the cellphone-less Flanagan got back to Calgary by car the next afternoon, utterly unaware of the controversy his remarks had inspired, he had effectively been put on an ice floe and pushed out to sea.

You can hardly blame his erstwhile political friends for denouncing his remarks. And the CBC, ever burdened with principles, found one handy to cut him loose too.

Without so much as talking to him, the president of the University of Calgary, Elizabeth Cannon, issued a mendacious statement distorting what he had said and implying that he had been pushed into retirement because he did not reflect the university’s views on child porn. Who knew universities even had positions on such things?

In fact, Flanagan was already slated to retire — something Cannon later clarified.

In Persona Non Grata Flanagan clinically dissects the remains of his career, examining in turn The Incident itself, what he calls the “moral panic” over child porn, the mechanics of a media mobbing, child porn as an issue of public policy and, finally, academic freedom.

He never quite comes to terms with his own propensity to attract controversy. After all, why mention to the Lethbridge crowd that he had been receiving mail from an organization of pedophiles? (Unsolicited, he says — the result of an errant mailing list.)

Flanagan claims he was just using a pedagogical technique designed to get students’ attention — something that works well in the classroom, not in politics.

I suspect there is more to it than that. I was reminded of David Letterman’s cruel dismissal of Madonna: “I think she likes to shock us.” Even a short conversation with Flanagan will be spiced with asides that are clearly intended to be politically incorrect — and he definitely enjoys the reaction.

Still, you don’t have to sympathize with Flanagan’s personality, his politics, or his views on prosecuting the consumers of child pornography to understand that he was convicted without a trial, traduced by former political friends, and caught in the hopped-up whirl of the social and traditional media cycle.

Most of all, he was betrayed by his university, which also betrayed both academic principles and common decency in its panicky flight for cover.

This was a very smart man caught in a web only partly of his own making. And it makes fascinating reading to watch him looking back in amazement, sorrow and regret.

—

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

PaulAdams is associate professor of journalism at Carleton and has taught political science at the University of Manitoba. He is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. His book Power Trap explores the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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6 comments on “The agonies of Tom Flanagan”

Totally disgusting comments from Tom re pedophilia, but what
is even more disgusting is how deep Tom Flanagan’s connections go in our
current government.

– Joined the reform party of Canada in 1990, and was an adviser
for Preston Manning until being fired in 1993

– Tom Flanagan and Stephen Harper began publishing together
in 1996-7 with “Canadian conservatism is at its strongest level in many years”
and their controversial opinion piece entitled “Our Benign Dictatorship: Canada’s
system of one-party-plus rule has stunted democracy.

– Flanagan was a key player in Stephen Harper’s political
rise to Prime Minister of Canada. Flanagan managed his leadership campaigns for
the Canadian Alliance (2002) and the Conservative Party of Canada (2004).

– He also managed the Conservative Party’s national election
campaign in 2004.

– He was the Senior Communications Adviser for the
Conservatives successful 2005–2006 election campaign.

– In 2008, Flanagan was accused by Dona Cadman of offering
her late husband, MP Chuck Cadman, a million-dollar life insurance policy (on
behalf of the Conservative Party of Canada) in exchange for his vote against
the Liberal budget in May 2005.

repost from comment board —-> Mr. Michael Harris, I am
a computer forensic examiner that works for the Internet Crimes Against
Children Task Force in the USA.
Having been chronically exposed to child
exploitation material for years during the performance of my job duties, I can
only gather from Tom Flanagan’s statements that either, a) he is severely
ignorant of what “child pornography” really is (not generally cutsie
naked kids, but instead graphic depictions of the true rape and assault of
children as young as infants in diapers)

or, b) he is making a very poor attempt (as pedophiles often
do) of masking his own predilections. In either case, his statements were
disgusting, though my gut instinct (which is very finely tuned these days)
tells me the professor has dabbled in this type of material way more than he is
stating, and has the warped sense of a true pedophile who does not classify the
memorialization of sexual abuse as a big deal. His statements, I venture, had
nothing to do with politics, but an ill attempt to justify his own
“tastes.” It’s too bad that search warrants can’t be based on pure
observational experience, because Mr. Flanagan would not only lose his jobs,
but his personal freedoms as well. Thank you very much for the article.

I think he’s an amoral man, a gunslinger. He will work for anyone who will pay him since he has no personal principles. I think he was ambushed in “The Incident” and it shows the world that he lives in, where loyalty doesn’t exist, a world he has built. But he is an interesting guy.

How can such a smart man have created the man called our PM. He even promoted lying, or not telling the truth. He’s not so smart now that he is looking back but look what he unleashed on Canada. Most Canadians cannot believe what this PM and his lackeys have done to our once great country. Trudeau better have some backbone because the last thing we need is a mushy Liberal. Trudeau’s father had backbone so I hope he passed some on to his son.